Access All Areas - Shared Care Scotland

Shared Care Scotland national conference

Battleby Conference Centre, Redgorton, Perth

This event has now taken place. This page contains information about the day including our conference report and some of the presentations.

Over the past 20 years we have seen significant progress in the development of inclusive, accessible cultural, recreational and sporting opportunities.

Exciting new technologies, self-directed support and other creative approaches are being used by ‘trailblazer’ organisations to enable people to experience the breaks they want.

What can we learn from these ’trailblazers’? How do we build on their achievements?

Shared Care Scotland’s Access All Areas conference aims to bring people from across Scotland together to explore these questions and consider how we can deliver equality of opportunity for all.

Amongst others, delegates will have the chance to hear from speakers including Judith Robertson, Chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, Dr Sam Smith, Founder and Chief Executive of C-Change Scotland, and Malcolm Roughead OBE, Chief Executive of VisitScotland. Each will address the theme through their unique perspective and are sure to challenge delegates to think creatively and imaginatively about what we can all do to promote inclusion. Our ‘trailblazer sessions’ will feature contributions from a wide range of organisations with experience of championing access to civil society, culture, sport, leisure and recreation. Those hosting workshops include Euan’s Guide, Sporting Memories Foundation, Cycling without Age, Gig Buddies and Inclusive Skating, along with many others.

The conference is for anyone interested in the development of inclusive, accessible recreation and leisure including: providers of mainstream or specialist short break services; policy, planning and commissioning staff, and SDS leads working across health and social care; service users and unpaid carers.

The Programme

The programme outline is as below. We’ll add more detail as it becomes available.

Registration will be available from 9.00am.

The conference will commence at 9.45am sharp. Our Chair for the day is Mairi Damer who will set the scene and oversee the day. We will also be welcomed to Battleby by Bridget Finton, Policy & Advice Officer at Scottish Natural Heritage.

Our first session will open with keynote speeches, followed by discussion. Our confirmed speakers are:

Judith Robertson, Chair, Scottish Human Rights Commission
Sam Smith, Director, C-Change Scotland
Shubhanna Hussain-Ahmed, Coalition of Carers in Scotland

Delegates will then be able to take part in two ‘Trailblazer’ sessions, one before and one after the lunch break.

A choice of two workshops will be available for both session 1 and session 2 on each of the following themes:

Culture
Leisure & recreation
Sport
Civil society: inclusion & participation

We’ll round up the workshops, then finish the day with presentations from:

Malcolm Roughead OBE, Chief Executive, VisitScotland
Jo Chopra, Founder and Director of the Latika Roy Foundation in Dehradun, India

The event will close at 4.15pm.

Speakers

Keynote Speaker

Judith Robertson

Scottish Human Rights Commission

Judith Robertson is full time Chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission. Before being appointed to the Commission in April 2016, Judith was Programme Director for See Me, Scotland’s programme to end mental health stigma and discrimination.

Judith has had long-standing involvement in social justice campaigning and advocating for the rights of many disadvantaged groups including as Head of Oxfam in Scotland for many years.

As Chair of the Commission, Judith provides strategic leadership and direction to the Commission’s work to promote and protect human rights for everyone in Scotland, including through Scotland’s National Action Plan for Human Rights.

She represents the Commission within the United Nations human rights system, engages at a senior level with the Scottish Government, Scottish Parliament and Scotland’s public authorities on human rights law, policy and practice, and chairs regular meetings of the Commission.

Follow Judith on Twitter

Follow SHRC on Twitter

Keynote Speaker

Dr Sam Smith

C-Change Scotland

Dr. Sam Smith is the founder and CEO of C-Change Scotland, a not for profit organisation supporting disabled people to live the lives they choose. She also writes and campaigns on issues of human rights, equality and social justice.

C-Change Scotland was initially established to support adults with learning disabilities and/or mental health issues who had been assigned significant reputations for challenging services. The organisation has been at the forefront of providing personalised support with and for disabled people in Scotland since 2001.

Sam’s interest in disability and social justice was inspired by her involvement with an inclusive youth club as a child. Sam has championed the values of inclusion throughout her academic and professional career.

Sam undertook a postgraduate MSc. in Applied Social Research which led to a brief career as a professional researcher. Later, while working as a Commissioner closing some of Scotland’s largest long stay institutions, she undertook her PhD exploring perceptions of risk.

Sam wrote the book Human Rights and Social Care: Putting rights into practice, published May 2018. Sam has an interest in disability and mental capacity and legal identity.

Sam is a Board member of several organisations supporting disability rights and provider organisation development. She offers consultancy in organisational development, creative service design, inclusive practice, individual budgets and human rights. Drawing on academic theory and extensive practical experience Sam is both an informative and charismatic public speaker.

Follow Sam on Twitter

Follow C-Change on Twitter

Keynote Speaker

Shubhanna Hussain-Ahmed

Coalition of Carers in Scotland

Shubhanna is the Partnership Development Officer at the Coalition of Carers in Scotland. Her role involves supporting carer organisations and the wider Third Sector with the implementation of the Carers (Scotland) Act.

Shubhanna has a background in research and policy work within the Third Sector, and more recently in academia. She is currently working towards her PhD in Health Psychology where her research explores the barriers and enablers to physical activity opportunities for unpaid carers in Scotland.

Shubhanna’s understanding of the health and social care landscape in Scotland, alongside her own lived experience of being a carer for a family member, provides her with a unique perspective on the challenges that carers and their families experience in accessing cultural, leisure and sporting opportunities in Scotland.

Follow Shubhanna on Twitter

Conference Host

Mairi Damer

Word Up Communications

Mairi Damer is founder and chief wordsmith of WORD UP Communications.

With WORD UP Mairi makes sure her clients get exactly what she says on the tin. That’s a really good way with words, plus expert insider savvy about how to communicate clearly and compellingly.

As a straight-talking, plain English speaking, highly experienced broadcast journalist and producer, who spent 15 years on some of BBC Radio Scotland’s best-loved radio programmes, Mairi brings a substantial broadcast CV to the party, and a personality to match.

Included in Mairi’s roll call of radio shows are Call Kaye, MacAulay & Co, The Lesley Riddoch Show, Good Morning Scotland, and the Sony Gold Award winning Sportsound.

Mairi always aims to be a true critical friend, and the ageing punk rocker in her offers her clients a bit of positive provocation, and alternative ways of seeing, doing and communicating.

Follow Mairi on Twitter

Keynote Speaker

Malcolm Roughead

VisitScotland

A graduate in Modern Languages from the University of Glasgow in 1981, Malcolm joined VisitScotland as Director of Visitor Engagement in 2001 from Guinness World Records where he was Global Sales and Marketing Director and held a number of senior marketing positions over a 17 year period with Guinness Brewing in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and North America. He began in marketing at Nestle, followed by Beechams.

Malcolm has been responsible for the repositioning of Scotland as a leading tourism destination and was appointed as VisitScotland’s Chief Executive in 2010.

In March 2004 Malcolm was awarded Scottish Marketer of the Year at the Scottish Marketing Awards and, in the January 2006 Honours List, he was awarded an OBE for services to Tourism.

Keynote Speaker

Jo Chopra

Latika Roy Foundation

Jo Chopra McGowan is an American, living in India since 1981 with her Indian husband. A writer and former criminal (she is a peace movement organiser jailed in America on a dozen occasions) she is the mother of three children, one of whom was born with a severe disability. She is co-founder and director of the Latika Roy Foundation, a 25 year old organization for children with special needs in Dehradun.

Currently a columnist for the Indian newsmagazine The Wire in India and for Commonweal Magazine in the US, she is the author of five books and hundreds of articles for Indian and international newspapers and journals. She trained as a lay midwife, is amusingly fluent in Hindi, and loves public speaking, opera, photography, reading, cooking and wine.

Follow Jo’s blog

Visit Latika Roy Foundation website

Trailblazer sessions

Artlink Edinburgh & Lothians

"Creating the Unique"

Culture Workshop

This workshop will illustrate some of the unique leisure opportunities inspired by the interests of young people with complex learning disability and autism in Midlothian. Artlink establish small groups and one-to-one projects which respond to personal circumstance in personality.

Working in partnership with families and supports, Artlink have developed an animation club, music lessons, and a sensory curriculum with the NHS complex care team. From llamas to musical theatre, to digital composition, young people are reinventing what’s possible in their local area.

Carers Collaborative

"What have the Romans ever done for us?"

Inclusion Workshop

How well is Health and Social Care Integration serving Carers?

This workshop shares the story of and learning from the Carers Collaborative, a network of Carer Representatives who sit on health and social care Integration Joint Boards (IJBs). The Collaborative provides peer support, generates evidence and develops practical guidance for Carer Reps and IJBs. Through short inputs about the Collaborative and group activity, it aims to:

Raise awareness of carer involvement in health and social care integration.
Promote engagement with local IJB Carer Representatives.
Describe the work of the Carers Collaborative as a model of supporting carer involvement, building capacity and generating learning.

You can download the Carers Collaborative presentation from the day here.

Euan's Guide

"Joining the dots for a holiday experience"

Inclusion Workshop

Getting away for a break comes with the many challenges of finding accessible accommodation but once that’s sorted what next?

For most folk it is an exercise in ‘joining the dots’ as you try to piece together the information on places to visit, to enjoy and to capture memories. It is the battle of gathering information that is a barrier for many people and it is this that Euan’s Guide seeks to change.

In three parts we will talk about and demonstrate how technology and people’s stories come together to help in:

Finding out where to go
Discovering if it works for you
Telling others to make their trip easier

You can download the Euan’s Guide presentation here.

Beach Wheelchairs

"Making our Beaches Accessible To All – a Journey From Concept to Reality"

Leisure & Recreation Workshop

This workshop will equip attendees to deliver an accessible project such as Beach Wheelchairs.

The aim of the workshop is to discuss the St Andrews Beach Wheelchair project from concept to delivery and the milestones and challenges along the way. It will also highlight the essential elements to making a project come to fruition and become operational within short timescales, and almost deliver a “franchise” of how to do it or at least how we did it through best practice, learning and teamwork. We will also share how we are using social media for maximum impact on a tight budget.

Cycling Without Age Scotland

"Wind in your hair" - An Introduction to Cycling without Age

Leisure & Recreation Workshop

This workshop will demonstrate how it can help people with limited mobility overcome some of the challenges they face in accessing recreational activities.
It will also show how such a simple idea of riding a trishaw can tackle many social issues including:

Social Isolation
Lack of confidence
Experiencing the ‘right to wind your hair’
Getting outdoors and getting active
Empowering those who have become disempowered by circumstances.

Inclusion

"Reducing the Barriers to Civic Participation"

Inclusion Workshop

This workshop will inform attendees about the work of Inclusion Scotland with a particular focus on their Civic Participation projects: Access to Politics, the Access to Elected Office Fund and Acces to Public Appointments.

The workshop will then break into small gorups to focus on people’s experience of the barriers that disabled people come across in civic participation and then look at some solutions to reduce these barriers.

This will equip people to gow away and assess how inclusive they currently are in their own work and also stimulate ideas as to how people can become more active in the areas they choose.

You can download the Inclusion Scotland presentation here.

Follow Inclusion Scotland on Twitter

Inclusive Skating

"Developing Ice Skating for Everyone!"

Sport Workshop

This workshop will tell the story of how sport can be adapted to become open to everyone. The unique policies of Inclusive Skating rely heavily on the care providedby the families and carers and are built into the competition, club and event system. This is quite different from the usual systems that exist that exist for the able bodied in sport.

You can download the Inclusive Skating presentation here.

Follow Inclusive Skating

Museums Disability Co-operative Network

Inclusive Practice in Heritage

Culture Workshop

This workshop will share Disability Co-operative Network’s journey in raising the profile of social barriers in engaging and participation of museums and heritage space within towns and cities. How we work with disabled people, families and organisations in creating collaborative inclusive practice within the sector as a workforce and service provider to enable more disabled and neurodivergent people to engage and participate in museums and heritage. This workshop will showcase current work, creating and sharing experiences with participants in their journey in how they visit and engage with public spaces.

There will be take away tips, advice and resources and participants will be invited to continue to work with Museums Disability Co-operative Network.

You can download the Museums DCN presentation here.

Follow the Museums Disability Cooperative Network on Twitter

PAMIS

"Profound Impact"

Leisure & Recreation Workshop

This workshop will:

Support participants to understand the complex needs of people with profound and multiple learning disabilities but also their aspirations for an inclusive life;
Share resources and models of working that support inclusion of this group of people and their families;
Inspire us to work together to promote inclusive leisure, sport and culture for all.

You can download the PAMIS presentation here.

Follow PAMIS on Twitter

A Sporting Duo: Anne-Marie Monaghan & Michael Kerr

"The Ups and Downs, of a sporty kind!"

Sport Workshop

This workshop will:

Share with people examples of the positive experience of sport in the life of people wiht disabilities from the personal experience of both Michael Kerr and Anne-Marie Monaghan. It will demonstrate that having physical challenges shouldn’t exclude you from participating in sport.

It will highlight both the challenges and the opportunities of involvement in sport.

It will take people through the ‘lived experience’ of setting up clubs, participating and competing, and most importantly, encourage people to have a go!

The Sporting Memories Foundation Scotland

"Introducing Sporting Memories"

Sport Workshop

This workshop will:

Demonstrate that there are ways to support older people across Scotland with dementia, depression and loneliness by engaging them in social activities and helping them to recall memories of watching or playing sport.
With sharing memories of sporting moments and tapping into a passion for sport we help people to connect with others and with their past, reawakening ositive thoughts and feelings that otherwise remain hidden away.
The opportunities to be actively involved with creative approaches in order to encourage people to make a difference with a little bit of fun along the way, through sport.

You can download the Sporting Memories Foundation Scotland presentation here.

Follow the Sporting Memories Foundation Scotland on Twitter

National Autistic Society & Rangers Football Club

"Broxi's Den - a safe and quiet space with the National Autistic Society Scotland"

Sport Workshop

This workshop will:

Raise awareness of the challenges that autistic people and their families experience when attending football matches
Show how businesses can be a welcoming place for autistic people and their families with the Autism Friendly Award
Provide an understanding of how Rangers Football Club created a safe and quiet space for families in Broxi’s Den and achieved the Autism Friendly Award

Gig Buddies

"We Could Be Heroes"

Culture Workshop

This workshop will:

Show the aims of the Gig Buddies project and how these are achieved.
Look at the social barriers that people with a learning disability face and the work Gig Buddies is doing to remove these
Show a different take on what ‘befriending’ can be, and how
all parties can gain from it
Provide ideas on how to creatively run truly inclusive community events for people with additional support needs.

You can download the Gig Buddies presentation here.

Glenrothes Strollers

"Inclusive Football"

Sport Workshop

This workshop will:

Show how participation in football is benefitting lives
through inclusivity by helping to combat isolation,
social exclusion & loneliness.
Demonstrate how football is an all-encompassing
sport that brings people together to improve lives by helping
with physical activity and social interactions.
Show football is a sport that is open and available to all.

You can download the Strollers presentation here.

Play as One Scotland

"Making Play Inclusive"

Leisure & Recreation Workshop

This workshop will tell delegates about an exciting new, community-led venture to develop fully inclusive play facilities in Scotland.
Play As One Scotland (pa1s) are a new Scottish charity that believe all children, no matter their ability, should be able to play together.

A group of us got together and set up (pa1s) as a registered charity to lobby and fundraise with the aim of ‘Making Play Inclusive for All’ In June this year the First Minister opened Scotland’s very first fully inclusive play area in Pittencrieff Park in Dunfermline.

We’re looking forward to telling you the story behind the park development, and our future plans!

You can download the Play As One presentation here.

Supporting Positive Paths

"Positive Potential of Groups"

Inclusion

This workshop will:

Explore how groups have created a community for positive paths and established a positive future for both our members and their carers.
Exploring our social groups and social breaks.
Explore how they have developed and the positive potential they create for our members, carers and Positive paths as a Community Interest Company.

Scottish Natural Heritage

"Our Natural Health Service"

Early Bird Workshop

Improving public health and reducing health inequalities are key priorities in Scotland. There is a strong evidence base for the health and well-being benefits of ‘green exercise’, which encompasses ways of using the outdoors and contact with nature to foster better health.

This workshop will explain the work being led by Scottish Natural Heritage, in collaboration with other public partners and health services, to maximise the contribution of Scotland’s natural environment to a healthier Scotland through the Natural Health Service action programme.

Evidence Base & Event Report

Evidence Base

The following Evidence Search and Summary Outline has been produced by IRISS for delegates attending Shared Care Scotland’s Access All Areas conference in November 2018.

The conference will explore innovative ways that organisations are supporting full and equal participation across leisure, sport, cultural life and civil society.

This report from IRISS contains a wide range of practice guidance and research evidence connected with this theme. As well as providing delegates with useful background reading leading up to the event, we believe this resource will also support their efforts, post conference, to promote and ‘champion’ the development of more inclusive and accessible opportunities in their organisations or communities.